Cool Card Design of the Day8/8/2017 - Primed is a cost reduction mechanic that rewards you for playing a lot of cards of the same color and plays well (possibly too well) with devotion.
The reason for the all-black mana costs is so that we don't have to clarify in the reminder text that reducing {2}{B}{B} by four black leaves a cost of {0} (even though that is how that works).
There's a good chance playtesting/Dev will tell us that being able to reduce the cost entirely is too strong, in which case we can go back to the delve model of reducing only the generic cost of a mana cost that also requires colored mana.
The ability to just cast these spells for free is probably too problematic, especially sense paying full price for one leads you to cast any others in hand for free. It could be fun on a Legendary creature though.
ReplyDeleteIt also strikes me as similar to Surge. I could certainly see conditional Surge variants running around if a set wanted them (Black Surge, Goblin Surge). Still, I don't get the impression that Surge was a particularly popular mechanic.